Blind Folded

When we’re born, we are born blind, like the kitten, yet we learn to see rather quickly. The imprint our parents produce, of course, is the first and foremost development- alongside our genetic predispositions. These conspire, work, plan, and the format for perception is thus laid out.

The problem is, in today’s world, we often grow into blindfolds. Having only ever seen what lurks on the reverse side of the fabric, we don’t know anything else but the slightly annoying tugging sensation that comes with wearing something a mask. Most people brush it off, the visual stimulus painted on the back side is too appealing, too rewarding, too gratifying.

This can go on for some time; to the extent we lose all sense of direction. Falling down is a change certainly, but the fabricated vision remains, so we walk in circles in our new lairs. We are going nowhere but further into the sight laid before our eyes- we are not even delving inward. We are delving into a surrogate reality, where the lines are blurred and nothing can matter.

What does it take- it takes a basic snip of the string to ‘free’ oneself from the pall. What is hard about this, is wielding those scissors which lie beyond the blindfold. They are an unknown existent, and do we wield them with certainty, just to cut the illusion off at the root? It’s a decision that all folk in today’s western world must make.

Courage, of any kind, is lacking. It is not something that can be given. It must be grasped, and taken. The worst fate a modern imagines he can experience, is looking like a fool before his peers. Who will join me in Valhalla?

It's impossible to have a conception of the outside before cutting the string. Being in the bottom of a hole, it might not be pretty either- but once you've climbed to the top, you can finally see the sun unmitigated.

And all around you, are the pits others have fallen into. A legion of them- and if we count those who have died without getting out, we consider those pits tombs.

This is sounding awfully like Plato's Cave allegory now I've realized- but perhaps slightly more pertinent to the specifically modern condition.

And, if looking like a fool is bad when considering your peers, how much worse can it be, for he who has crawled out of his hole, to see the living tombs of everybody else, refusing to budge out of a fear of the unknown?